Off Court - Chapter 9.1

The next few days were actually some of the most enjoyable of my life. Or, they would be, had you taken Camillo out of the equation. I walked Christina around the tournament grounds all day and she asked me if various tennis players we passed on the practice courts were nice, cool, interesting et cetera. She managed to refrain herself from asking which ones I found the most attractive, which I was proud of her for. When you stood in the viewing area from any given practice court, you were usually never more than five metres from the nearest player and Christina doesn’t have the quietest voice in the world.

I’d also introduced her via video call to both Natalie and Maderic. Maderic would have been around to introduce her in person but I hadn’t seen him since his injury. Natalie and Christina got on brilliantly, though Christina talked about biology a little bit more than Natalie seemed to have expected. Natalie made the mistake of telling Christina, a medical student, about her wrist injury, and five minutes later the two of us were lost in Christina’s long string of scary sounding jargon.

My life was surprisingly peaceful without Camillo in it, but apparently it wasn’t to last.

Christina and I were watching court three one day, which actually had the final set of a doubles match taking place on it, when Christina nudged me and pointed up to the scoreboard that hung off Centre Court.

“Poor Jean,” she murmured. The rest of the crowd had started looking round too as she pointed, and her sombre reaction seemed to be going against the grain.

Camillo had just thrashed Jean-Pierre Roux six love, six love. The dreaded double bagel. This impressed most of the crowd, who were in awe of the things their hero was on the way to accomplishing. Christina however, must have been thinking of her partner Michel, who was Jean-Pierre’s brother. They’d met at an event for future stars in Paris, which both I and Jean had been invited to.

“I guess those midnight runs are doing him some good,” I whispered.

She gestured with her head for us to leave the viewing area and I followed her round to a little shaded alcove with a water fountain. It was pretty quiet – nobody really needing water refills on this blustery day, so we could talk.

“Do you think I should go comfort Jean? Or would he not want to talk to anyone?” Christina’s eyes were wide, as if she held the stability of poor Jean’s mental state in her hands.

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I’d want to be alone, but that’s just me. Knowing Jean… Well, I don’t know. How did he seem yesterday? Was he excited about this match? Camillo wasn’t that impressed with his own performance the other day… Maybe he thought he had a shot? If he did, he’s probably distraught.”

Christina sighed. “I’m going to go see if I can find him. Wait, will this get me to him?”

She pointed to the VIP pass that was hanging down to her stomach. I’d draped it round her neck when we’d arrived that morning and she’d nearly fainted with excitement.

“Yeah, I think so,” I said, “And if not, I’m sure I can get you there, probably.”

“What’s your live ranking again?” She winked at me.

“For the last time, you do not get more access the higher your ranking. Now come on!” I put a hand on her back and shoved her a little but we both giggled as I did so. It was so good to have her around.

---

Jean, as it turned out, was a wreck.

“Jean? Jean!” Christina waved a hand in front of his face. We were in the cafeteria, which wasn’t empty, but the other players were giving us space.

“I thought my serve was… But no…” He continued staring into space. He’d managed to shower and get dressed, pack his bag and get all the way here, all seemingly with this level of consciousness. I was surprised he hadn’t just wandered out into the streets like this, but maybe he was afraid to face everyone. Oh God, he’d have to do a press conference at some point.

We were there for at least five minutes trying to get him to finish a sentence. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but a second feels exponentially longer the more worried you get about someone. But some combination of persistence on both our parts and Christina stroking his wavy black hair finally managed to make some progress and he looked right up into my eyes.

“Sorry for being so, uh, useless. But you realise he’s your next opponent, right?” He stared at me for a few more moments, moving his mouth enough to know that he wasn’t finished but not enough that I could figure out what he was actually going to say. Finally, he managed, “We’re going to be calming you down tomorrow.”

I smiled with one side of my mouth, which I hoped came off as wry, but my stomach lurched. I’d forgotten about that. I know it’s a cliché that you don’t look ahead of your next match in a draw, but I’d been having so much fun with Christina that I had genuinely forgotten Camillo would be my third round. Wonderful.

“Uh, guys, could you two keep each other company for a moment?” I said, handing Christina a few dollars for her lunch, then remembering how posh the venue was and handing her a few more. I started to turn to go, but caught a glimpse of Christina’s frown and added, “I’m going to go do something probably quite stupid.”

I’m not going to say that would have comforted her, but I hoped she at least saw that I was self-aware as I went off to find Camillo.

After seeing Jean’s reaction to the match plastered all over his face, it was enough of a shock to draw a gasp from me when I found Camillo. He was sitting on a public bench near the outskirts of the tennis centre grounds, steadily taking bites of his sandwich and not looking up from the ground. There were a few kids staring at him from the nearby café, but he was doing so little that almost as soon as they spotted him they got bored and wandered off.

This left the coast pretty much clear for me to go sit on the bench and congratulate him.

“Uh-huh,” was all he said. He continued to eat his sandwich.

“So I guess those midnight runs have been working out for you, eh?” I grinned and resisted the urge to nudge him and wink.

“It’s not a joke,” he said. His voice was even gruffer than the night I’d come across him in the hallway. That was actually really difficult, because it was the last time I’d seen him and I’d built it up in my head to him sounding like he wanted to bite my head off.

“I never said it was,” I muttered, “Sorry.”

He finally looked up at me. Still gruff, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, “Do you want to talk about it? When something’s bothering me getting out of my head always helps.”

“No,” he said. His voice was still a bit rough but it wasn’t cut as short and snappy as it had been. “I just want to escape, Léo.”

He really didn’t seem to be in good shape. How was he playing so well with this much on his mind?

“Is that why you went out for a run the other night? To escape your hotel room?” I asked.

He shook his head. “That’s not it.”

But then he didn’t go on and I didn’t know what to say. If he’d wanted to explain what he meant, he’d have volunteered it there. I was just standing up and about to say goodbye to him when he grabbed onto my arm and gripped it tight.

“I’m escaping into tennis. It’s the only place I can go. Not like last time.”

His eyes were big and wide and I wanted so badly to hug him and probably would have had he not stood up and bolted away. He didn’t quite run, but if you’d seen him walk past you’d definitely have thought he was very late for something. A few tennis fans did notice his rapid pace, in fact, and most seemed to be torn between asking for autographs and diving out of his way.

I sat on the bench for a bit and hung my head. If there was one thing I thought I was good for, it was dealing with troubling thoughts. But no, it seemed I’d made things worse. I really should have just left him alone.